Richard "Dick" Winters, pictured in 2002 Dick Winters was the leader of a valiant World War II paratrooper company that became famous a half-century later in historian Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" and a subsequent HBO miniseries.

For example, Guardian Comicsâ AIRBURNâ¢ was a heroic paratrooper who gained fire-based powers after drifting through a glowing cloud on D-Day; in the Silver Age, Bulwark Comicsâ AIRBURN (with similar powers) was the primary aide-de-camp of BRIGADIER BLACKâ¢ in the ECHELON OF EVILâ¢.

The writer Paul Gilroy, in his recent book Darker Than Blue, makes the point that Hendrix's life and music were propelled by two important factors: his being an "ex-paratrooper who gradually became an advocate of peace" and his "transgressions of redundant musical and racial rules".